Posted on 03/18/2007 10:34:55 AM PDT by Perseverando
First Amendment rights collided with Second Amendment rights in the recent brouhaha.
It didn't take long for Sunshine Week to turn stormy.
At 9:15 last Sunday morning, just a few hours after The Roanoke Times was dropped on doorsteps and shoved into paper boxes across the region, Scot Shippee fired the first shot in what would become the newspaper's biggest Internet controversy.
In an online discussion forum, Shippee blasted the paper for posting on its Web site a database that included the names and addresses of everyone in Virginia licensed to carry a concealed handgun.
Shippee wrote that if the newspaper was so committed to public information, it would only be fair for him to publicly list the home address of editorial writer Christian Trejbal. A column by Trejbal that day had urged readers to celebrate Sunshine Week -- a national recognition of the public's right to know -- by using the database to see who in their community was "packing heat."
In the furor that followed, irate readers swamped the newspaper with hundreds of calls and e-mails. And Trejbal became the recipient of threats and a suspicious package that drew a state police bomb squad to his Christiansburg home.
There was no bomb, only fallout.
Even though The Roanoke Times hastily removed the database from its Web site, questions remain: Should people be allowed to know who among them is secretly armed? Or did identifying those who carry concealed handguns invade their privacy and make them targets for criminals?
And will this fundamental conflict between advocates of the First and Second amendments be resolved by the General Assembly's restricting public access to gun permit information when it takes up the issue next year?
***
The issue of hidden guns and open records is handled differently from state to state.
Virginia is one of 17 states that treats information about concealed-handgun permit holders as a public matter, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
In another 18 states, the information is closed from public view. The remaining states have no laws or court decisions that clearly address the question one way or the other.
Because laws vary from state to state, direct comparisons are hard to draw from a database of record availability compiled by the committee.
In some states the information is open only to police, in one state it's available just to the media, in others the names of permit holders are public but their addresses are not, and in others permit holders can petition the court to keep their information private.
In Vermont and Alaska, the issue is moot because people don't need a permit to carry a concealed handgun. In Wisconsin and Illinois, individuals are not allowed to pack a hidden holster, permit or not.
One thing does seem clear: A growing number of states -- including Florida, Ohio and South Dakota -- have passed laws in recent years to remove or restrict concealed-weapon information from the public domain.
Virginia could be headed in that direction, as the blowup over Trejbal's column has some state lawmakers talking about introducing bills at next year's General Assembly.
"The trend has been moving in the direction of protecting people's privacy rights," said Alan Gottlieb of Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights organization based in Washington state.
The catalyst behind that trend is "abusive behavior by the media," said Marion Hammer, executive director of Unified Sportsmen of Florida. Hammer's group pushed for the change in Florida's law last year after an Orlando television station became the latest media outlet to run a database of concealed handgun permit holders.
"They made it sound like exercising a constitutional right was something wrong, and they held [gun owners] up to ridicule," Hammer said.
While Second Amendment supporters argue that publicizing the names of gun owners violates their privacy and makes them possible targets of crime, some First Amendment advocates say there's a compelling public interest in that information.
"I can hear the shocked indignation of gun-toters already: It's nobody's business but mine if I want to pack heat," Trejbal wrote in his column on Sunshine Week, which included a link to the now-defunct database of permit holders.
"Au contraire. Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone's business."
Some media experts -- journalism ethics professor Edward Wasserman of Washington and Lee University among them -- have questioned whether a newspaper should publish the information just because it has it.
But Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, sided with Trejbal. "I think public records are public records" and people should have the right to see them, she said.
"I don't know what it is about the gun people. They seem to think they should have all these rights, but they don't want to recognize the rights of the rest of us to know who they are."
***
Among the hundreds of comments about Trejbal's column that followed Shippee's initial posting to roanoke.com's message board, there was this one from a woman identified only as "Not Wanted to be found":
"I've moved twice to get away from a violent ex. Now I have to move again. I really appreciate you publishing my address. Gee, thanks."
It was a common theme that ran through the opposition: Publicizing the names and addresses of 135,000 concealed-gun carriers was more than just a privacy issue; it also enabled criminals to track down their victims and find the best homes to burglarize for guns.
Yet no one interviewed for this story -- including a Second Amendment scholar, a state police spokeswoman, the National Rifle Association and three other gun rights groups -- could point to a single incident in which that actually ever happened.
The odds seem unlikely to Randell Beck, executive editor of The Argus Leader in South Dakota, which maintains a database of that state's concealed handgun permit holders on its Web site.
"I find it very difficult to argue that [publication] in any way may put you on somebody's burglary list," Beck said. "In fact the opposite argument applies: If I'm a burglar looking for a place to steal stuff, and if I know Joe Blow has a handgun, I would be less likely to burglarize his house, knowing that he might shoot me."
Andria Harper, director of the First Amendment Foundation, made the same argument when her group fought unsuccessfully against the move to close gun records in Florida.
"That's the definition of a dumb criminal," Harper said. "To stalk someone they know has a concealed weapon."
Even though NRA spokeswoman Ashley Varner could not cite an incident in which a criminal used concealed-carry data to commit a crime, she said there were "real-life situations" in which potential victims were forced to move after being outed.
Said Varner: "I would hope that we don't have to wait for someone to actually be burglarized or raped for someone to say: 'Oh, maybe this is a bad idea.' "
***
Not many people noticed, at least not at first, when The Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg quietly put a database of local concealed handgun permit holders on its Web site in November 2002.
But once the Virginia Citizens Defense League found out, the guns rights group quickly mobilized its membership, encouraging them to bombard the newspaper with angry e-mails and phone calls. The organization also dug up the home addresses and other information about the paper's key managers and made it public.
"We were flooded" with opposition, said Brian Baer, editor of Fredericksburg.com. The newspaper quickly took the database down and never put it back up.
But The Free Lance-Star still publishes information from newly issued concealed handgun permits, which it gathers from local courthouses, on a regular basis.
Local news editor Dick Hammerstrom said they might get a complaint every month or so.
The same holds true in Danville, where the Register & Bee runs the information in its weekly publication for nonsubscribers.
"It hasn't been an issue here at all," news editor Darren Sweeney said.
That could soon change, as the controversy in Roanoke has refocused the VCDL's attention on the issue. "They're going to get a pounding on this," the group's president, Philip Van Cleave, said of any newspaper that dares publish the information.
VCDL was especially incensed that The Roanoke Times chose to list the exact address of gun owners. The Fredericksburg paper listed just the street names, and in South Dakota only the city or county in which a gun owner lives is made public.
While the Argus Leader received about 20 complaints, editor Beck said he would have expected much more flak had the exact addresses been listed.
Another reason why outrage peaked in Roanoke might be a line in Trejbal's column in which he noted that Virginia does not take the same pains to list gun owners online as it does for convicted sex offenders.
"Concealed handgun permit holders and sex offenders????," wrote one poster, identified only as "vashooter."
"Your [sic] a class act, way to abuse the first amendment while trying to strip us of the second."
Before a Virginia resident obtains court permission to carry a concealed handgun, he or she must pass a criminal background check and a firearm training course. That should debunk the implication that concealed handgun carriers are an inherent risk to society and need to be monitored, said Nelson Lund, a George Mason University law professor who specializes in gun issues.
"Every time anyone has looked into this, they have found extraordinarily low levels of misuse of firearms by concealed-carry holders," Lund said.
***
Almost as fast as the concealed handgun database went up on roanoke.com, it was gone.
Roanoke Times president and publisher Debbie Meade explained Monday that it was pulled because of concerns that state police, who provided the data at the newspaper's request, might have identified crime victims on the list in violation of a state law.
That turned out not to be the case. But the newspaper was in no rush to re-post the data, explaining that it was only intended as a temporary feature to supplement the column on Sunshine Week.
Many questions remained unanswered by week's end, including three that were submitted in writing to Meade:
Did the newspaper make any mistakes in publishing the database? If yes, what were those mistakes? If no, did the newspaper bow to pressure in deciding not to re-post the data?
"We're still responding to the developments from the past several days and have not had time to evaluate all of this yet," Meade responded Friday afternoon in a written statement. "But I can assure you that those discussions will take place."
Then last Thursday they were trying to give their newspaper away at a local Kroger. My wife declined to accept their free newspaper. The next day,Friday morning, there on my door step was a free newspaper.
Apparently they are trying to get the paper distributed to people in an effort to keep their advertising rates up. It's the newspaper's advertisers who carry the financial burden for the cost of newspapers. The more papers distributed the higher the advertising rates.
If you haven't already, be sure and contact The Roanoke Times and their advertisers to let them know how you what you think of their left wing agenda.
Debbie Meade, President & Publisher 540-981-3226, debbie.meade@roanoke.com
The Roanoke Times
201 W. Campbell Ave.
P.O. Box 2491
Roanoke, Va. 24010-2491
Main Switchboard: (800) 346-1234 or (540) 981 3340
Considering the part of Virginia they are in I am often surprised how left wing the paper is. I don't live there, but Mom does. Maybe I'll call her and see if she will cancel her subscription.
Yep, everyone is surprised when they find how left wing the RT is. I've had people who've moved here from the northeast tell me that the RT is more left wing than their newspaper from where they came from.
Great idea. Call your Mom. When the RT feels enough heat, perhaps they'll see the light.
California has a right to privacy in its state constitution, so if some paper here were stupid enough to pull such a stunt, its shareholders (or owners if it was privately held) would quite possibly lose all their equity to a class action by the gun owners whose privacy was violated.
Any time a media whore wants to justify existing, it's the First Amedment or it's the "public's right to know." Well, we have a right to know the media moron's sexual predilections as well, along with his underwear size, brand and frequency of change, and lots of other intrusive factoids. But, what would be served by being given the information? He's intellectually dishonest, not to mention bankrupt, in not admitting that he simply wants to force people to sweat for his personal reasons. Until the media learns basic honesty, they have no right to decide for us, what is our right to know, any more than they have the right to decide what is and isn't news. Any cries for regime change in the US ought to be directed first toward the media morons.
Can be easily solved by not keeping records of such things.
Don't keep lists and the question becomes moot.
In the interest of "free speech" I think the home addresses and phone numbers of all msm reporters should be published.
"That's the definition of a dumb criminal," Harper said. "To stalk someone they know has a concealed weapon."
And we all know crooks make wise decisions and have always behaved rationally when it comes to getting their next fix.
And the new shooter I met at the range last year; a liberal opera singer who was prompted to get a gun and a permit by the sheriff's dept who said they couldn't protect her "24 hours a day" from her lunatic ex-boyfriend. I suppose it was ok to publish her information too.
Leftists hiding behind the moniker of the "First Amendment Foundation" are almost as funny as the Fifth Columnists masquerading as defenders of the Constitution.
And why the worry of people posting the names and addresses of the paper's employees? It's not retaliation, it's public information.
I don't think the RT will change, but watching them bleed money is always entertaining.
You’re definitely wrong there mate.
We “Gun People” think that everybody should have all these rights.
We think that there should not be any permits at all. We think that everybody has a right to bear arms in there own defense and that government has no business issuing permits to people that allow them to practice their rights.
If there were no carry permits anyone who was not legally prohibited from carrying a concealed weapon could and the predators in our society would never know who was armed and they would be very careful about attacking people.
So your publishing the names and addresses of those with carry permits increases the danger for everyone two ways; One it discourages people from obtaining a carry permit and there by decreases the number of law abiding persons in public carrying arms for defense of themselves and others, Two it gives a shopping list to criminals seeking guns.
LOL
"In Vermont and Alaska, the issue is moot because people don't need a permit to carry a concealed handgun..."
One of the *few* things Frank got right.
I had a couple of contractors come up here to do some IT work - from NY or NJ, I forget. I haven't forgotten the look of (horror?) as I told them Alaska was a shall issue state and Frank was soon to sign a free CCW bill.
I also noted they were not quite so quick to make small town jokes after that as well.....
""I don't know what it is about the gun people. They seem to think they should have all these rights, but they don't want to recognize the rights of the rest of us to know who they are.""
In other words, their curiosity trumps my rights.
When will they start posting the lists of everyone read their miranda rights?
This argument is a non-sequitur. Any burglar with a brain will case the house he intends to rob to be sure it is not occupied.
Mr. Shippee returned their volley yet the claim is that he's the one who fired the first shot? That sounds like a five year old's complaint: "Ma! He hit me back!"
"But Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, sided with Trejbal. "I think public records are public records" and people should have the right to see them, she said."
A problem with the "public's right to know" argument and reporting is that regardless of what the public has a right to know, the media only tells the public know what the media chooses to tell it.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer put up the list for Ohio and has never brought it down. They update it every year.
I wouldn’t line my bird cage with that leftist trash.
Almost as fast as the concealed handgun database went up on roanoke.com, it was gone.
Roanoke Times president and publisher Debbie Meade explained Monday that it was pulled because of concerns that state police, who provided the data at the newspaper's request, might have identified crime victims on the list in violation of a state law.
That turned out not to be the case. But the newspaper was in no rush to re-post the data, explaining that it was only intended as a temporary feature to supplement the column on Sunshine Week.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer put up the list for Ohio and has never brought it down. They update it every year.
I wouldn’t line my bird cage with that leftist trash.
Theoretically, the only secrets the government should keep are military ones. And that's just at the federal lever. But try to get information out of any level of government that doesn't feel like cooperating. The agency that spilled the beans on concealed weapons(not "hidden", which is a liberal code word) probably would never open up the list of teachers or cops facing disciplinary actions for any reason.
If you disallow open carry, and most states do, they have a duty to keep private the information on those who went through their licensing process to carry a concealed weapon. A concealed weapon has distinct tactical advantages over one carried openly. A major advantage is that the bad guy never knows who's carrying, and who's not. Posting a list of those who have permits contradicts the reason for having CCW permits in the first place, which is the obvious intent of this article.
If they wanted a worthy project for "Sunshine Week", they should have demanded public access to the "locked room" in the House office building where evidence against Bill Clinton is locked up for the next 75 years. That room, and the clinton liebary, are probably the two most secure secret repositories in the country.
I guess Sandy burglar was only doing freelance "Sunshine Week" celebrations when he stole top secret documents from the archives, and walked away with a pat (not even a slap) on the wrist.
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